1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to cleaning compositions for body, food, and food contact surfaces which reduce the risk of illness caused by harmful chemical residues, infectious agents and other disease causing and spoilage microbial agents. More particularly, the present invention provides chemical disinfecting compositions which reduce injury or inflammation to the skin. Even more particularly the present invention concerns disinfecting compositions which use safe and non-toxic chemical agents selected from alcohol esters of ethyl lactate and its homologs for preparing products with cleaning, solubilizing, antimicrobial and microbicidal properties.
2. Prior Art
Most common antimicrobial products such as chlorine, chlorine dioxide peracetic acid, ozone, hydrogen peroxide, UV- and other radiations, used to reduce microbial population on food and other contact surfaces possess highly oxidizing and sometimes destructive properties. These oxidizing chemicals and physical agents inactivate microorganisms by reacting with their organic material. However, these chemicals also react with organic food material and produce unknown chemical residues often harmful to human and animal health. Hypochlorite (chlorine) produces carcinogenic residues on food. These antimicrobial products do not have detergent action or cleaning properties. Some other cleaning preparations that are allowed on food either do not have antimicrobial and microbicidal properties or are not safe enough as the ingredients are not considered by the FDA as GRAS or food additive safe. Some other preparations have disinfecting properties without the solubilizing properties to remove harmful pesticide residues. Still some other cleaning products need to incorporate antibacterial compounds in these preparations to inhibit or kill microorganisms.
Thus, there is a need for cleaning compositions containing antimicrobial and disinfecting properties which do not exhibit the deleterious properties identified above.
The antimicrobial cleaning compositions of this invention, as described below, employ all GRAS and/or food grade additive ingredients with cleaning, solubilizing, detergent and antimicrobial properties.